


To Know Despair (Project Icarus)

by electricteatime



Series: To Know the Parts of Me By Name [2]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Blood, Emotional Trauma, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fear of Death, Gaslighting, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt No Comfort, It gets pretty dark, Just a whole load of no goodness, Other, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Project Icarus, Systematic Abuse, Trauma, Violence, emotional dependency, institutionalisation, please heed the warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 07:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13208775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricteatime/pseuds/electricteatime
Summary: Project Icarus is not a person. It should be because he doesn’t feel anything, blank, detached, a suit of armour with nothing inside.Project Icarus is not a person because there is far too much going on inside of him to be contained inside of a human being.***This is the second in a series of stories looking at the different people Dirk has been in his lifetime, and how they are all a part of him even if he tries to keep them separate.We pick up with Project Icarus, a defense mechanism that is arguable at best in it's efficiency.





	To Know Despair (Project Icarus)

**Author's Note:**

> This is Part Two of a series, if you haven't already please read Part One first!
> 
> This took longer than I thought it would and for that I apologise. It's also longer than I meant it to be but I can't bring myself to apologise for that. 
> 
> As usual, please heed the warnings for this fic. This is by far the worst of the series and I put everything I can think of into the warnings but please let me know if you think I'm missing something. The angst is strong here and I'd rather you didn't read if you think this is something that will upset you. 
> 
> As ever, thanks to the wonderful dont-offend-the-bees, this probably wouldn't even have been finished without you and I appreciate that. Also thank you to backatthebein for the kind words of encouragement and picking over my grammar, you're fantastic. 
> 
> ***  
> This is part of a currently three-but-potentially-five part series which is an all out angst-fest but will hopefully resemble in some way a character study of Dirk Gently.
> 
> We started with Svlad Cjelli, a boy who wears his heart on his sleeve.  
> We pick up with Project Icarus, a defense mechanism that is arguable at best in it's efficiency.  
> And we'll finish with Dirk Gently, a man who is everything and nothing all at once.

 

 

_The world will try to sharpen your edges, but you were made for kinder days than these._

***

Project Icarus is not a person.

Or at least he’s trying not to be.

It’s easier that way, he imagines, if things that aren’t people can imagine things at all. It gets confusing if he thinks about it for too long and most of the time he’s trying not to think about anything. The problem is that they won’t let him. They want him to think, want him to feel, want him to _know_ things he’s told them he can’t possibly know and if that hasn’t gotten through to them by now he fears it never will.

He can't be a person. He's a concept, an idea, perhaps even a dream but he is not a person. Someone lives inside of him somewhere, but he pushes them down and away when he can. Going through the motions the only way he knows how and hoping the day will be kind. He wishes he didn’t hope for anything at all, but even when he tries he can’t make himself not have a soft heart. Project Icarus knows the world isn’t built for soft hearts.

It never lasts long, the blankness. It comes and goes, and he wonders if it would stay if they left him to it. If they didn’t force him out of it. The problem is that they need him present, they need him to engage, so they let him keep it up for a day or two sometimes but if he doesn’t snap himself out of it they do it for him. He never tries to pull himself out, he just enjoys the quiet.

When he surfaces, it's bad. Like every feeling he tried to keep down comes rushing out all at once, kicking and screaming and angry. Full of heat and rage driven by a hopeless, empty pit inside of him that will dissolve him into tears before he’s done trying to tear their machines apart, outpouring everything that comes with trying to suppress a whole person inside of yourself.

They don’t give him time to come to terms with breaking the surface, no space to re-orient himself with his surroundings, nowhere to hide from the destruction he’s caused and the inevitable that follows. Always in trouble. Always, always. Being blank is bad and overflowing is bad and not giving them what they want is bad. He can take every turn and still get trapped, he can be anything or everything or nothing and it still won’t be what they want. It’s not enough, it’s not right and it’s always _bad_.

On the rare occasions he gets something right, Riggins will come and talk to him. He has a name now, a familiar face, a kindness about him that he doesn’t know what to do with because if he put him in here then he can’t be kind. But nobody else is kind to him, nobody else speaks softly. He brings him books as gifts, tells him he’s doing well, that they’re making progress, that if things keep going this way then maybe he’ll be safe enough to be let go but they have to stay on this track. He ruffles his hair and gives him a smile before he goes, and _Svl_ -Project Icarus gets whiplash from how human it makes him feel.

He never stays on track.

 

***

 

The first time he sees _him_ again he’s just been thrown into his room to cool off. He’d reached another breaking point and he doesn’t understand how that can keep happening, that’s not what Project Icarus is supposed to be. He’s supposed to be blank and calm and detached, supposed to not let anything in, but they know how to get in. They know the cracks in his armour and they never give him time to rebuild. Project Icarus never manages to become what Svlad Cjelli wanted him to be.

 _He_ comes in and the heat in his veins rushes out so quickly it’s a wonder he doesn’t start shivering. It leaves because it’s hard, he supposes, to rage about being treated like an animal in a cage when he doesn’t think he’s ever felt more like prey. The smile is there, the one that haunts his dreams. The dreams Project Icarus isn’t supposed to have because he’s not supposed to be a person, he’s not supposed to be this weak or afraid. That’s not supposed to be him. 

 _He_ makes him into that though. _He_ knows exactly how much to press to shatter his armour like it was never there. _He_ delights in doing it.

“Svlad,” _he_ says and no, not here, not now. He freezes in place as _he_ approaches, there’s a black box in _his_ hand and he has no idea what it does but he knows it isn’t good. “ _Svlad_. When I heard someone was causing trouble I just knew it would be you,” _his_ voice is sing-song in a sickening way, that laugh dancing around the edges as _he_ takes _his_ measured steps closer and Project Icarus tries to will himself to melt through the wall at his back. Blackwing would probably be delighted, so like everything else that would earn him their favour it doesn’t happen.

“Do you know how bad you have to be for them to call me in? How dangerous they must have thought you were? They must have feared for their _lives_ ,” _he’s_ standing right in front of him now, he can feel _his_ breath as _he_ watches the way he’s shaking with a clinical kind of detachment.

Cold. Detached. That’s what Project Icarus is supposed to be, and he scrambles to piece something like that together now.

“But then I suppose we can’t blame them for that now, can we?” _he_ raises the box and he flinches, watches the smirk crawl across _his_ face at the sight. “We all know what happens to the people around you.”

It doesn’t even register that _he’s_ pressed the button until the room is filled with the sound of gunfire. Instinctively he ducks out of the way, but it’s useless because there’s nothing there. It’s just a recording.

It’s a _recording_.

This time he knows what’s coming before he hears it, but he still can’t shield himself from the sound of his mother’s screams, the sound of his father begging for his life and the sickening, stomach turning sound of bullets tearing through flesh. It’s not like it was on the night, where he was rooms away hidden under his bed. The sound had been muffled then, distorted, but this time it’s clear as anything. It sounds like it would if he were standing over them.

But he’s not standing at all, he’s backed himself into the corner, trying his best to block out the sound but there’s something else underneath it. Something soft and familiar and that’s her _voice_ it’s their song, the lullaby. Hidden right there under the gunfire and it’s confusing enough to make him look up, questioning weaving its way through his distress because he can’t work out how they could possibly have done that. _He_ doesn’t give any answers though; _he_ just crouches down, watching him with that cold, bottomless smile.

“This is my favourite bit,” _he_ says, holding up a finger as if indicating he should listen. “What does she say there?”

He shakes his head, buries his head against his knees and pulls his arms up over his head like it will make it go away. Make it all go away. Project Icarus was never strong enough for this, he had never seen this coming.

“No, no, no Svlad, _listen_ ,” _his_ voice is calm and he wants to scream. “That bit there. What does it mean?” He knows from _his_ voice _he_ already knows the answer. The words in that language, a language he never quite had for himself, are words he knows well. He bites down on his tongue and shakes his head. A moment later there’s a hand in his hair, wrenching his head up to meet an empty stare.

 _He_ holds the box up again, the fear that it could get _worse_ than this spears through him.

“You want it to stop, Icarus? Tell me what it _means_ ,” the stare is no longer empty, instead an open pit of icy rage that if he had anywhere to go to he’d pull away from. The sound of screaming, bullets, that _song_ is so loud in his head he wonders if it will ever stop ringing in his ears, the hand in his hair wraps tighter and nothing about Project Icarus can stand up to this amount of pressure. He just wants it to stop; he’ll do _anything_ to make it stop.

“I love you, _I love you_ ,” it’s torn out of him with a sob that wracks his whole body. “ _It means I love you_.”

The silence of the room comes rushing in suddenly and it’s deafening, broken only by his harsh intakes of breath as he tries to claw even a fragment of his protection back.   _He_ smiles, watching him with the same kind of interest a child gives to an insect they’re holding a rock over.

“Sounds to me like that was her first mistake.”

The sound it rips out of him is inhuman, head dropping to his knees as soon as he’s let go and barely even listening to the way _those_ footsteps make their way out of the room.

Project Icarus is not a person. It should be because he doesn’t feel anything, blank, detached, a suit of armour with nothing inside.

Project Icarus is not a person because there is far too much going on inside of him to be contained inside of a human being.

 

***

 

Somehow, he pulls himself together enough to learn how to become something else, a series of moments and actions rather than a complete being. It’s easier than having to rebuild himself every time, living through each minute as it happens and as time goes on the list of moments grows until there’s a recognisable structure to what he is.

Icarus is no. Icarus is stop. Icarus is please. Icarus is I didn't do anything wrong. Icarus is I don't know. Icarus is I can't do it. Icarus is it doesn't work like that. Icarus is why won’t you listen? Icarus is I won’t. Icarus is fuck you.

Icarus is sorry. Icarus is _so_ sorry.

Icarus won't do it again.

Icarus is lying in bed alone in the dark and trying to remember what it feels like to not be afraid.

 

***

 

Project Icarus doesn’t see _him_ again for a long time, and even though _he’s_ not there it doesn’t make the rest of them any easier. They treat him like he’s dangerous, and maybe they’re right, but the ones who don’t look at him like he’s a threat scare him the most. If they aren’t afraid of him they’re just intrigued by him, and he works out over time that that’s not good at all.

The medical tests are once a week and it’s much of the same, blood tests and injections and fitness levels. They shine light into his eyes and check his reaction times, run some tests that presumably make sure he isn’t having his brain slowly fried by the electrical currents they keep running through him. There’s no questions about how it may be affecting his mind in other ways, which he finds himself thankful for because his new defence is unstable and he doesn’t think it would hold up under the questioning.

It strikes him as odd then, when they take him down to medical the day after he’s had his routine check-ups, odder still when the man who meets them there isn’t any doctor he’s seen before.

Project Icarus is used to being confused. They try to mix things up a lot, as if they can shock his body into compliance. Forty eight hour days followed by twelve hour days followed by eighteen and thirty six and on and on until he has no hope of knowing what day or time or year it is anymore. Shaving his hair off so the electrodes stay better and feeling like they’re stripping something vital along with it. Keeping him awake until he can barely stand, until even the shocks won’t wake him up when he nods off and he can taste metal in his mouth and hear ringing in his ears and is convinced the walls are moving. Disorienting him by putting him to sleep in one place and having him wake up in another. Refusing to give him food until he gives them what he wants, like he wouldn’t agree if he could when he gets to the point where he wonders if he might be able to eat his own fingers, surely he doesn’t need them all? Far too hot. Far too cold. Injecting him with something that makes him see thoughts and taste colours and throw up for hours the next day. One constant buzzing sound that worms its way into his head and doesn’t leave for days after they tell him they turned it off. Everything they do when they start getting desperate is designed to push him right to the edge in the hopes it will snap his power into action. It never does. It doesn’t work like that.

So by all accounts this shouldn’t make him suspicious, but it does. The doctor doesn’t smile, just gestures to a chair and they force him into it with rough hands even though by now he knows better than to resist. When they strap him down it’s tighter than usual, even more so than after one of his outbursts which are rarer these days, but what really bothers him is when they fasten cold metal around his head and then he can’t move it at all. He tries not to let the way panic settles so comfortably into his chest show on his face, but ultimately fails when they tighten something over his mouth, and he knows without trying that if he spoke it wouldn’t go very far. The door shuts with a bang when the guards leave them, and for a long moment the room is filled with nothing other than the sound of the doctor tinkering with his tools.

“They say you’re being difficult.” It’s not a question, he couldn’t answer if it was, so he just watches his back from the corner of his eye. “I’m going to run some tests, simple ones, you’ve tried them before. Only this time you’re going to give me the answers I need.” The doctor turns to face him, placing a small device into his hand, and it’s one he’s familiar with at least. Four buttons for four possible answers, press the right one and everything is fine. Project Icarus knows right then and there this isn’t going to be good, and pulls up every ounce of defence he can find, trying to shut himself down.

“Questions. Answers. Read them, pick the right ones. You know how this works but trust me, you _want_ to pick the right ones,” the most jarring thing is he doesn’t even sound threatening, just firm. Bored even, if he really had to pick, but then there’s words on the wall in front of him and he reads them, futile as it is.

 _The next image you see will be a shape. What shape will it be?_  
_  
_ _A.Triangle. B. Square. C. Rectangle. D. Circle._

It’s a question he’s had a thousand times and he knows he can’t answer. He presses B. The next screen shows a circle and he tenses, held too tight to flinch properly from a shock that… doesn’t come. He frowns, confused, but when he looks to the doctor he just tilts his head back to the projection. “Try again.”

They run through this until he’s well into the thirties on his attempts. Not a single answer he’s given has been correct, but not a single shock has been administered and it’s wound him so tight he feels like he might burst with it. When he gets it wrong the next time the doctor sighs, pressing a button that makes the words disappear and that _should_ be a relief. Instead it makes the back of his neck feel cold.

“They think you’re psychic,” is what breaks the silence. A small part of Icarus that he’d thought had long since died reawakens at the statement, that maybe he might have found someone to believe him, but it’s dashed as soon as it re-emerges. “You’d be dead by now if you weren’t. So either you’re very stupid, or something is wrong.”

Project Icarus feels like something is _very_ wrong, but not in the way he thinks the doctor means.

“I think there’s a way we can help you. You have a power of some kind, that much is obvious, the energy in you is off the scale but something is stopping you accessing it. I think I know what,” the tray that’s set down beside him makes him jump, trying to turn his head to look but he’s held too firm to do that. Panic creeps its way up his spine as that sense in his gut they want to get at so badly tells him this is _badbadbad_.

“The problem is that you can’t see,” he carries on, indifferent to whether or not he’s getting an answer it seems, happy to explain himself even if it doesn’t make anything clearer. Icarus can see, he’s never had any problems with it and he wishes the man would just tell him what he means, too tired of the games they play here to want to play along.

“You can see in the ordinary sense, of course,” noting his confusion, “but you have the potential to see so much more. You’re missing a part of you that will help you see the whole picture, something that you haven’t had access to until now. You’re familiar I assume with what’s known as the inner eye?” His breath starts coming in quicker before he can even work out why, hands tightening around the armrests as he tries to find some give in the straps that are holding him down. “We need to expose that, let you truly _see_ the outside world,” he explains, and Project Icarus has a moment of shocking, _terrifying_ clarity as the man turns around.

Because he has a drill.

He has a drill and Icarus can’t move. The doctor isn’t saying anything anymore, but he keeps coming closer and the sound is getting louder and he’s going to die. This man is _crazy,_ _Blackwing_ is crazy and oh _god_ he’s going to die. He’s going to _die_ and he can’t even move, can’t even _scream_ past the gag and even if he closes his eyes he can _hear_ it getting closer because there’s a madman who’s going to _drill into his head_ and Project Icarus has never _ever_ wished harder that he could give them what they want. He’s been trying to build something for himself, some kind of armour, some kind of protection but in that moment Project Icarus is nothing but helpless terror, knowing that he’s facing down his own death and he can’t lift a finger to save himself. He’s alone, he’s useless, and he’s _going to die_.

The door bangs open, jolting him with the sudden sound and then the only voice he knows as soft is shouting so loud it disorients him further. The drilling sound stops, the pressure on his head is loosened and when they take the gag off he’s still making panicked noises and he can’t make himself stop. Everything is happening so fast, he can’t get his breath to come in properly, and then there’s soft hands on his face and a voice he tries to focus on that seems to be making some progress at cutting through the panic in his head, because he should be dead, he _should be dead_. Perhaps he _is_ dead. Perhaps this is it and he’s failed everything.

“Svlad, you need to open your eyes,” it’s firm but not a threat, the words don’t quite compute for him. “I’m sorry, that shouldn’t have happened. I’ll explain later, I promise, but right now I need you to open your eyes. Can you do that for me?” it’s so soft, so patient and Icarus shakes his head for a moment because he doesn’t want to give into that, he’s trying to be stronger than that. It’s something though, something that isn’t cold and clinical or loud and terrifying and in the end it’s the child he’s been trying to bury inside himself that responds to the kindness as he pries his eyes open.

“ _Good_. That’s good, you’re doing well,” the Colonel isn’t smiling as such, but he looks at him softly, working the bindings around his wrists loose with a careful touch. His words are soft, it’s still disorienting but it makes him feel safer even when he knows he shouldn’t trust that. He needs it. Still though, the panic is there wild and consuming, and he’s barely clinging onto his voice enough to pull through it if the way Riggins is looking at him is anything to go by. Like he’s one small breeze away from tipping over the edge.

“Get me Project Incubus.” The command is sharp, not directed at him but he flinches from it anyway. “They’re going to help you,” he reassures him, “we need to get you out of here, but they can help you. I’m sorry, Svlad. This won’t happen again.” He wants to scream that it never should have anyway, but there’s no fight left in him right now. He wonders, vaguely, if there ever will be again.

They manage to get him out of the chair without too much incident, tying his hands together because he’s so on edge he can’t even predict his movements himself. The fear is crawling up his throat, threatening to drown him even though the immediate threat is gone. They’re heading down a corridor he’s unfamiliar with, and it’s mostly dragging at this point because he can’t make his body cooperate. Riggins keeps telling him they’re going to make him feel better, Icarus has no choice but to believe him even when the room he’s tossed into does nothing to inspire confidence.

It’s dark, is the first thing he notices. Lit up in strange blue lighting that does nothing to alleviate the oppressiveness of the grey walls boxing him in, the sound of a bolt sliding home in the door behind him only fuels his panic. Aside from the passageway to the door, the room is empty and yet feels close as if by design. Icarus feels like he can’t breathe. He scrambles for the wall, something solid to put his back against, somewhere he can see everything and not feel so exposed. There’s no way to get to the walls though, the floor ends before it touches them, separated by metal grates that he doesn’t trust enough to look into. Instead he huddles in on himself in the middle of the room, eyes closed and shaking as he tries to wish it all away. He feels like prey even though there’s no way he can be hunted in such a small space.

Icarus is sobbing, he’s not sure when he started but the adrenaline is singing through his system, stinging at his nerves. He nearly died, or worse perhaps if the doctor had succeeded, and all they’d done was thrown him into somewhere that does nothing to calm the way he can feel his heart beating all the way up in his throat like he might choke on it. Project Icarus is failing, and he tugs on his hair as a form of distraction, anything to try and keep himself grounded, because he still feels like he’s strapped in that chair. Still feels like death is coming for him.

Suddenly the room is overcome with noise, the dragging sound of metal as the grates are drawn back and a blaring siren sound echoing off the walls as some kind of mechanism engages and something is dragged up from under the grates.

Not something, he clarifies a moment later. Someone. Multiple someones.

They’re the first other people like him he’s seen in this place, but even the novelty of that isn’t enough to curb the terror that’s clinging to him like a second skin. He’s confused and tired and scared out of his mind, and thinks for a moment how much he wants his mother. The thought of her only hurts more.

The men, more boys really, especially the one in the far-right corner, are strapped in completely and Icarus can’t help but wonder how dangerous that means they are. They look weak though, weaker than him, like they haven’t slept or eaten in weeks and now they’re looking at him like they’re going to eat him alive. He realises very quickly that he’s trapped and outnumbered.

He opens his mouth, but doesn’t manage to say anything before he’s overrun with a sudden rush of cold.

They’re doing something, dragging something out of him that explodes across the room in a stream of blinding blue light, and he can hear someone saying something or making some kind of noise but he’s too disoriented to work out what it is. It doesn’t hurt, more like the feeling of being dunked into an ice bath, cold shock and all the breath rushing out of your body at once. Not a relief as much as a sharp jolt of something freezing.

Just as suddenly as it came the feeling cuts off, Icarus has collapsed onto his back on the floor and he feels… nothing. The agonising fear is gone but so is everything else, like someone has hollowed him out so he’s left cold and empty and he thinks maybe he should be worried about that, but when he reaches for the feeling it’s not there. The tears are still drying on his face when the exhaustion of everything catches up to him and drops him into the unforgiving blackness of sleep.

 

***

 

Project Icarus becomes compliance. He learns how to obey, does as he’s told when he’s told and does his best to push all the ways it makes him feel down and away to be dealt with later, a time that never comes. He doesn’t know himself anymore and he thinks maybe that’s okay.

The days stretch on, long and unending, and things cycle round as they always do. Every now and again something will go _right,_ and the days will get a little easier. Riggins will visit, he’ll smile and talk to him for a while, leave him with a book that he never manages to pace himself with and will finish overnight. He likes the mystery ones best, the ones with groups of friends looking for clues and catching bad guys. When he can’t sleep at night he lets himself wonder what that might be like, but he pushes those thoughts away by morning because dreams have no place in the daytime, not here. When hope flares up he teaches himself to ignore it. The good days never last.

Every single time they think they’ve made a breakthrough there’s a steady decline that follows. He’ll get everything wrong again, going back to disappointing them and their disappointment comes with punishment. It comes with frustration and pressure and pushing and pushing and pushing, shoving him in every direction they can think of in every way they can. They treat him less like a person and more like a subject as time wears on, and learning not to give in as easily serves him well. Right up until they want him to break and he doesn’t. He’s still easily broken, but he just accepts it now that whatever happens, no matter how unpleasant, will happen. No amount of screaming or crying or yelling or begging will make them stop, and so he doesn’t try to make them anymore. They will stop when they see fit.

The only time he can’t help himself is with _him_ , because _he_ knows how to pull whatever _he_ wants out of him no matter what it is. _He_ doesn’t want his acceptance, _he_ doesn’t want him to bear it, _he_ wants to play. The sound of _his_ footsteps approaching is as familiar to him as the fear it brings with it, always stopping in his doorway whether _he’s_ there for him or not. It’s a game, he knows it is, and yet whenever _he_ pauses outside his door Icarus curls in on himself and closes his eyes. It’s a small mercy when the door doesn’t open, but his heart rate doesn’t slow until long after they pass and disappear down the hall.

The cycle continues. Whenever they go too far in their desperation for results Riggins will make an appearance. He’ll come in the same way he had that first time, speaking quietly and trying to calm him down. He’ll tell him he’s been good, tell him he’s doing well when he starts to level out his breathing, tell him that this was never meant to happen. Icarus doesn’t work out until years later that he’d been lying, that he’d been _watching_. Maybe he’d suspected it somewhere, but he’d been too desperate for comfort to consider it at the time. It was only ever a small amount of comfort anyway, whenever they couldn’t get him to calm down they’d throw him in with the group he comes to know only as Project Incubus, and over time he stops passing out after they hollow him out entirely. They aren’t permitted to talk, but somewhere down the line he finds himself jealous that they have each other.

He asks, one time when he’s been really, _really_ good, for a friend. Anyone, really. Someone to talk to like the people he reads about.

When he goes back to his room that night all of his books are gone.

The next time he’s good he gets chocolate.

It’s not the same.  

 

***

 

Eventually they become desperate enough to let him meet some of the others. Project Icarus is well aware he’s being observed when they push him into a sterile room not unlike his own, and he tries to keep his excitement in check when he realises there’s another person in there. The person isn’t like him though. For one thing he’s older, significantly so, and for the other he’s not moving. Icarus wonders for a moment if he’s dead, but when he inches nervously closer he realises the machines surrounding him are keeping him breathing. He has no idea what they want from him, but there’s a chair next to the man and he sits in it waiting for some kind of instruction.

The instruction never comes, and he wonders if this is maybe some kind of test. The papers next to his bed say that he’s Project Moloch, but that’s just about all they say. The rest of it is medical jargon he doesn’t understand enough to work out anything past the fact that it doesn’t look like the man will be waking up anytime soon. Icarus doesn’t know what to do, but he reaches out carefully to take his hand, squeezing it gently before letting go. It felt like the right thing to do, like solidarity. Letting him know he’s there, but he’s not one of them, that they’re on the same side. Icarus has no idea if any of it comes across, but it makes him feel better all the same.

Moloch becomes part of his routine. It’s not often that they take him, but it does become a regular occurrence and Icarus finds himself quietly looking forward to the visits. Even if they just sit together it’s a time free from decisions and punishments, and if he tries hard enough to ignore the one-way mirror he can pretend it’s just them. That they’re somewhere else. He tries not to let on that he likes being here, scared that they’ll take this from him too.

Eventually, many months later, Icarus starts talking to him. Not much at first, mostly asking questions he knows he can’t answer, but he doesn’t tire of the one-way conversation. He tells Moloch about the stories he used to read, recites some of them from memory as best he can and adds parts in where he forgets what happened. It’s been a long time since he’s read anything and he’s been making up his own stories since then, building up somewhere to escape to in his head. Over the years there are times when he tells Moloch those stories too, stories about a detective who has friends and a family and solves crimes. A detective who catches bad guys, who gets to go on adventures and eat waffles and look at the sky. It’s all made up, he tells him. Just a story. Leftovers patched together from the other stories that he’s heard, but really it’s his story and nobody else's. They can’t take a story from him. When things get too bad he goes to the blank place in his mind, but when they get too lonely he goes to his stories. He wonders secretly if Project Icarus could have kept him safer if he’d locked himself away in there, but Moloch is locked away in his own head and he doesn’t seem much better off.

It’s years after the first time they’d met, but something had been swirling in his stomach for days now and it's a feeling he knows well. It’s only getting stronger as the days pass, tugging at him and it’s all he can do not to hope too much. It feels like something is waking him up and he’s been fighting it as much as he can, struggling against being pulled back into his body when he doesn’t even know who he’ll be when that happens. Sometimes the universe is too much though, too hard to ignore, and somewhere he starts to think he might have an idea of who he’ll be after all. It still scares him.

He sees Moloch the night before it happens. Nothing is different, nothing has changed, but just before he leaves he leans in close and speaks as softly as he can so they can’t hear. A secret between the two of them. A name.

When the guards pull him out they demand he tells them what he told him, but Project Icarus just asks them if they can feel it coming. It’s not the first time he’s seen them look scared of him, but it’s first time it hasn’t felt bad.

 

***

 

When it happens, Project Icarus remembers it like this.

He goes to bed that night with something itching under his skin. It feels bad, uncomfortable, and not at all unlike the last time he’d felt it this strongly. Project Icarus doesn’t know what that means, but he hopes more than anything it isn’t going to be a repeat of that, even knowing that this time there’s nothing to take away from him. They already have everything. Still though, there’s nowhere to go and so despite the feeling that urges him to do something he lays in bed and waits, scared of what might be coming, scared of himself for what he might be bringing here.

The sirens are deafening when they jolt him awake, lights flashing red casting strange shadows on the walls of his room, and what sounds like chaos just beyond his door. The tannoy is screaming about securing the projects over the slamming of military-issue boots down the corridor. There are other voices as well, people laughing and shouting and then people barking orders in response. Icarus doesn’t recognise any of them. He recognises the gunshots when they come though, and presses himself into the wall as far away from the door as he can get, too big now to hide under his bed and too terrified to move when the gunshots eventually stop.

The feeling in his stomach is stronger than ever, tugging at him in a way it never has. He knows there’s someone outside, that it wants him to open the door, but he doesn’t get a chance before it’s flung open for him and someone he actually does recognise sticks their head around the doorframe. It’s one of the Incubus Projects, the youngest one. He has something that looks suspiciously like blood painted onto his white undershirt, and a grin that takes up more than half of his face. He looks wild.

“Time to go!” is all he says before another of them, and he’s never quite worked out their relationship to each other, pulls him back by the collar. Icarus meets his eyes and is held there for a moment, something unspoken passing between them while his heart races in his chest and the universe inside of him reaches out.

The man nods once, tossing a piece of broken pipe into his room before turning to follow the racket the rest of the group are making down the corridor. Icarus doesn’t move.

He doesn’t move for quite a while, actually. Everything inside of him is screaming to get out of here, to take his chances and run, trust his gut, but up in his head it’s not quite that simple. He’s been here for so long, and he knows what happens if he steps out of line. This would be the worst thing he could possibly do, and with what they’ve already seen fit to do to him he can’t help but be frozen in fear at the thought of taking that risk. What if he just waits here? Proves he can be good once and for all, wouldn’t that be better than leaving the only place he’s ever really known? Once he’d asked how long he’d be staying here for and he’d been asked in return where he’d even go if they let him out. Who would make sure he wasn’t hurting anyone else? At the time he’d been convinced here was the only safe place for him, it still feels like the only home he’s ever truly known and no matter how bad that home may be it’s still something. It means he has someone, it means he has somewhere. But then Project Icarus is used to feeling lonely inside of these walls, even knowing he’s surrounded by other people and it’s never truly felt like he had anyone or anywhere at all.

When he peels himself away from the wall and picks up the pipe he’d been thrown it settles something inside of him. For the first time in his life he feels the ground solidify beneath his feet, and that’s all it takes for him to start running.

 

***

 

Icarus runs as fast as he can down the corridors he knows too well, trying to get as far as possible without stopping. It’s a mess. The halls are dimly lit by emergency lighting and the sirens are still blaring, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone around. Well, not anyone who’s going to stop him. There are at least three people between him and the door into the next wing, laying on the ground like something sucked the life out of them and threw them away. Icarus doesn’t stop to check if they’re still breathing. Instead he tightens his grip on the metal, trying to look like he’s held a weapon before and is willing to use it as he inches towards the door.

He’s never been down here before, but the tugging in his stomach is telling him it’s the right way to go and he doesn’t have any other directions to follow. In the distance he can still hear screaming, fighting, gunshots. It seems like he’s heading away from the chaos though and for that he’s thankful, even if he can’t hide the way his hands are shaking. Instead of keeping pace he slows down, keeping his steps as soft as he can manage, hyper aware of trying to keep quiet and not draw attention to himself. When the fear starts to creep into his mind he slams it out before it can start whispering that it’s not too late to turn back, to go back to his room, to be good. The temptation pulls at him with every step, but the pull of the universe is stronger, urging him on past the terror of being caught like this. Icarus feels the way his breath is starting to come in too fast, it seems loud to his ears and he can feel his heart through his ribcage, wonders how it hasn’t alerted anyone to his presence yet. The corridor seems never ending and the walls feel like they’re starting to close in around him so it’s a fight to keep his gaze forward, the part of him that just _knows_ things assuring him that it won’t be much longer, and it’s all he has right now. A promise from something beyond himself.

The hallways wind on, feeling more maze like as he follows them and hopes to god he doesn’t hit a dead end. Twice he’s had to stop himself from screaming, hand clasped over his mouth so tightly, because one of the soldiers had moved and he’d thought it would be game over. Neither of them had gotten up though, one of them laying in an alarmingly large pool of blood and it makes him wonder who else they have in here, what kind of people could fight off soldiers with no weapons of their own. What kind of people he wouldn’t stand a chance against if they caught up with him too. Icarus doesn’t know if they have sides anymore, or if anyone standing in the way of freedom is a fair target. He doesn't want to have to find out.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to.

When he rounds the next corner Icarus freezes, staring wide eyed at the end of the corridor in front of him. There’s a light, not the low-lit emergency lighting, but bright green and glowing like an imitation sun over the door, bold and proud and unfailing in its statement. _Emergency Exit._

It’s such a short distance, but he walks it in a trance. The pipe slips from his fingers and clatters to the floor, but he doesn’t even stop to check if it’s pulled attention to him because it’s there. He’s made it. Once he opens this door there’s no going back, not voluntarily, and it’s enough to give him pause as he rests his hands against the push bar almost reverently. It would be a lie to say there isn’t a part of him urging him to stay, but the universe is telling him to go and there’s little he can do to deny that call. It feels more important than anything.

“Svlad,” it comes from behind him, a warning that pulls tension into his body as he realises he’s already dropped his weapon. Icarus rests his head against the door for a moment, a brief goodbye just in case this is as far as he gets, before turning to look over his shoulder.

Riggins is there, out of breath and clearly exhausted, sporting a black eye and holding one hand against what looks like a bullet wound. He feels his chest ache at the sight, wanting to run to him but for what? He’s the closest he ever had to a friend, to someone who cared for him, but right now his free hand is wrapped around the grip of his gun even though he hasn’t taken it out of its holster yet. It’s the first time Riggins has done anything to suggest he would directly inflict violence upon him, and it’s just as shocking as the first time they’d jolted him with electricity all those years ago.

“Svlad, you don’t want to do this,” his voice is steady, reassuring, but there’s a threat behind it too now. The warmth doesn’t quite reach his eyes and Icarus wants to know how often this man had hidden inside the one who ruffled his hair and sneaked him presents. If this was the man who watched from behind the mirror as he screamed, the one that decided when enough became too much (always too late), before swooping in to _save_ him. He wants to turn the acid that crawls up his throat into words, into weapons, but he can’t find them. All he can do is stare.

“Where are you going to go?” he asks, only this time he can hear the indifference behind it. He thinks on some level Riggins cares for him, but not in the way you care about a person. More like how you care for a prized pet or a fancy car. “There isn’t anybody waiting for you, nobody out there knows you. You’ll get yourself hurt,” it’s not enough, and Icarus can see when he decides to switch tactics, righting his posture before he speaks. “You’re dangerous, Svlad. You’ll only hurt them if you leave.”

It’s enough to give him pause. He _is_ dangerous, he knows that much. There’s proof of how often he can bring harm to himself and others strewn throughout his history and that’s in a controlled environment, god only knows what he’ll do out there. Still, the feeling that’s pulling him on tells him to go, hands shaking on the single bar that stands between him and the outside world. Riggins seems to sense that he’s losing him, taking a step closer and taking the pressure off his wound to hold a bloodied hand out to him.

“Be reasonable, Svlad. If you leave you can’t come back. You’ll be on your own, nobody will help you and if you betray us after all of this then I won’t be able to protect you anymore,” he says it like he’s offering him a lifeline.

Icarus tightens his grip on the bar. He’s scared of the outside world, but it feels right to leave now. He’s wanted this to stop for so long he can’t remember the first time he thought about it, but now he has a chance and he can’t understand why he feels guilty at the thought of leaving. Blackwing has given him everything he has, all he _is_ is within these walls and he doesn’t know how else he’s supposed to go on. Maybe he does owe them, maybe Riggins is right and leaving would be a betrayal of the only people he’s ever known. Maybe they are helping him, keeping people safe by keeping him here. Or maybe it’s time he started listening to the only thing he _truly_ knows, the one guiding light they wanted so badly but could never get to. The universe is calling him, and everything inside of him is calling out in answer.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice soft and eyes down, because even if he doesn’t know why, he _is_. Project Icarus spares one last look at him, hoping he understands before he pushes the door open with all of the strength he possesses.

“ _Goddammit!_ ” Riggins shouts, fumbling for his radio. “I need back up _now._ East Wing, we’ve lost Icarus!” There’s a split second where he raises his gun and considers firing, but despite everything hanging in the balance he can’t bring himself to do it. Years later, Riggins will tell himself that this moment makes him a good man.  

 

***

 

Project Icarus doesn’t look back. He runs and runs and runs until his lungs are burning and his legs are threatening to give out beneath him, but he pushes through it with as much will as he can draw from himself. There’s nothing in his head but the thought of getting as far away as possible, and even though he has no idea where he’s going he knows it has to be better than where he was. It _has_ to be. If all of this is for nothing he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

At some point the ground changes. He’d been running through woods, the dirt and wet leaves beneath his feet offered little purchase, and his palms are grazed from steadying himself on trees. Now the ground is harder, compact, like people have come through here frequently enough to wear it down, and he stumbles over the feeling of solid ground. Every single part of him aches, and so he gives himself a chance to pause and look up.

There’s a cut on his face, his chest hurts and he’s fairly sure he’s covered in dirt, but his heart is racing like it’s finally found a reason to come to life, and with the night sky so clear above him he can see what the reason might be. There are stars for miles, stretching out over his head and on and on into the distance, glittering, bright and calling out to him. Icarus reaches a hand up towards them like he can call back. Between one breath and the next he notices the wetness on his cheeks as he stares at the moon like it’s an old friend. He hasn’t seen the sky in years and he’d forgotten how vast it was, how much it could make him feel.

The universe is tugging at him still, pulling him along and it’s not hard to follow when he has nothing else. He wanders down the road with eyes fixed on the eternity above him, knowing he can’t be more than a pinprick against the blackness but feeling infinite all the same. The sun, he remembers, will rise in the morning. He walks all night, but stops to watch the darkness stripped away by vibrant colour as the sun climbs over the horizon. An ache in his heart tells him how desperately he wants that for himself.

The days roll by in an endless cycle. He walks and sleeps and eats and walks. It’s a routine, different to the one he’s come from but enough to keep him grounded for now, there’s so much to take in he barely has time to think. The universe wants him somewhere and he’s going, he knows as long as he does he’ll be looked after even if he can’t explain how. He’s provided for enough to keep going, enough to ease the exhaustion and the hunger and the pain in his feet. He finds a new set of clothes along the way, nothing that stands out but better than the branding they’d stamped across his chest. He changes that night, inside a motel room he’d broken into, after marvelling at the softness of the bed. He found he could touch the ceiling when he jumped on it, laughing when his fingers grazed the paint. When he pulls them on he finds the jeans are worn in and the shirt is soft, the hoodie he tugs over his head is comforting. It’s the opposite of everything the jumpsuit he’d lived in was, and he doesn’t hesitate to throw it away.

All of the jumpsuits had been the same. Endless swathes of grey and orange with no change, no pattern. They weren’t warm or comfortable, but functional which he supposes was the point. A uniform. An identity. Something he no longer has.

Project Icarus had been many things. A first line of defence, an escape, a prison. He had been lonely and scared and never quite as strong as he needed to be. Hopeful once, and then never again. He’d been armour, the thing to be broken to protect what was inside, but some things had broken through anyway. Some things had gone too deep. He hadn’t been a person, not really. A subject, a number, an experiment. Something to keep everything at arms length. Project Icarus existed inside; he was never meant to be free. In the outside world he fits like a badly made sweater, because Project Icarus is a product of a place he no longer belongs to. Out here it’s too much to let himself still be theirs. He’s seen the sky and what the world can be, felt the pull of the cosmos dragging him closer. Icarus is too hollow for that. He exists on the surface and the world is too deep. He will set himself ablaze trying to be enough for it, but he doesn’t need to. He already knows who he wants to be.

When dawn begins to break on his seventh day, he packs his bag with the little he has and goes out to greet it.

Project Icarus spreads his wings against the night sky, and in the sunrise Dirk Gently watches them burn.

**Author's Note:**

> So! Let me know what you think! I like getting words in return for these words but screaming will also suffice. I hope you like it, I'd ask you to be nice, but I already know you're a lovely lot.
> 
> You can catch me at kieren-fucking-walker on tumblr if you want to yell at me or with me about Dirk Gently. Or anything else, I'm around. 
> 
> As a final note, I am a trained but not practicing psychologist and I would like to say that if you are experiencing problems with abuse, trauma, mental health or any of the bad things mentioned in this fic please contact someone. Therapy is a wonderful tool, but even if you aren't quite there yet you can find a help/crisis line for your country at this page http://togetherweare-strong.tumblr.com/helpline and I am always happy to point you in the direction of services that can help.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I'll see you in the new year with Dirk Gently!


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